Sherby: Happy birthday to Oily, happy birthday to Oily, happy biiirrrthdaaaay… dear Oiiiilllyyy…

Sherby: Happy birthday to Oily, happy birthday to Oily, happy biiirrrthdaaaay… dear Oiiiilllyyy…..happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu xD

Oil Pastel turns 18 today! All celebrate and hip hip! This little creation is part of her birthday present from me (the humble Miss Mayhem) who wishes her felicitations and hopes she enjoys reading the sex scenes as much I as enjoy writing them

(p.s. Sara your snatcher's crust's got aids and you love porn – and you'd best review EVERY chapter with your thoughts and innermost feelings xD)

Note: To those readers expecting another chapter of 'One' and wondering why the hell I've released something called 'A Tale of Two Fitties', the next chapter is almost complete. It was placed on momentary hiatus while I finished this bad bastard. It won't be long, I promise – it's almost finished as it is!

A Tale of Two Fitties

Part One; Misunderstandings

It was a big forest.

Scratch that.

It was a huge forest.

Sara looked up through the canopy of green foliage at the blue sky floating above. Lazy clouds ambled by like sheep grazing their way through the bright blue heavens. Hemming the edges of the sky she could see no significant landmarks or figureheads to help her pinpoint her own location (a monument similar to Mt Rushmore lay far, far away to her left – she could almost make out one of the faces – but Sara lived in England, not America, and was quite certain that it was impossible for her to have fallen from one country into another; especially ones so far away from each other). After landing hard in a rather prickly rose bush and wondering how the hell she'd ended up in the garden ('It seems far too bright for me to be drunk yet… although that hasn't stopped me before… but I don't remember drinking any alcohol… although that isn't unusual either…'), she had spent a good two hours clambering through the vast, thick forest and searching a little worriedly for her friend Jenny, who was the last person she remembered seeing before she awoke with thorns sticking into her belly. She was hungry and thirsty and fed up of fighting with apparently endless undergrowth and so had stopped for a break.

The noise of a stream trickling away nearby reached Sara's ears, and she pushed herself to her feet a little wearily; her shoes, although they were flat, were only canvas and completely inappropriate for trekking through the fauna of the forest. Sighing (and attempting to ignore that hot, blistering feeling growing all along her heels) she began to make her way toward the sound of water, echoing like tinkling diamonds along the hot, dry soil. When she reached the stream she was hesitant – she did not know what country she was in, nor did she know the state of the water; was it safe for her to drink? The clenching of her parched throat won over any debate that may have lingered, and she suddenly plunged her olive hands into the glistening water, cupping them together hungrily and bringing the liquid to her lips with an almost reverential gingerness. The taste was cool and soft in her throat, and she allowed some of the water to trickle down her chin and neck in her eagerness to quench her thirst.

'Excuse me, miss,'

A voice brought her attention away from the twinkling drops of refreshment in her hands, and she glanced up to see a tall man of about twenty staring down at her from the other side of the stream. He seemed too dark for the beautifully bright day shining down upon them. The silver of the river reflected hauntingly in his dark, black eyes, and Sara instantly moved backwards, away from the edge of the stream, wondering at his strange dialect and unusual costume.

He continued to watch her as she scrutinised him; long, black cloak decorated with strange scarlet clouds, thick jet hair held back in a loose ponytail, and skin as pale and wan as the dying moon before dawn. His dress offered her no clue as to her location, and, throat a little whetted by now, Sara dared to answer the mysterious stranger who had addressed her moments ago.

'What do you want?'

The man blinked, as though he were just as surprised by her voice as she was by his. His face broke into an unexpectedly gentle smile and his eyes crinkled.

'I believe your friend is upstream a little way, washing her feet in the water.'

Sara ignored the relief flooding her chest that Jenny was (a) alive and (b) nearby and forced herself to remain suspicious. She frowned at the man with as much bravery as she dare.

'How do you know I have a friend? How do you even know who I am?'

Her voice didn't sound quite as courageous as she wanted it to, but it was decent enough to get the message across stream that she didn't trust this strangely clothed, unusually pale man. His face looked a little too gaunt; his cheeks sallow and unhealthy looking. Still, he smiled even more kindly at her, and Sara couldn't help but admit that he seemed quite friendly.

'Your friend was bold enough to ask me had I seen a young woman in "leopard-print tights". I don't know what tights are, but your legs are covered in the spots and colours of a leopard. I assume that isn't your real skin.'

Sara scowled. 'Of course not. They're tights. You're not as clever as you make out to be if you don't even know what tights are.'

She couldn't bring herself to thank the man who had mocked her so gently. Instead, she turned to the right and marched away, wiping the water from her throat aggressively and forcing herself not to look behind her as she followed the path of the stream that wound through the forest. The man standing at the bank of the stream watched her with a faint smile, allowing the shafts of sun from above to splay onto his face peacefully. After a moment, his black eyes, marbles in the strong sunlight, flashed into a scarlet deeper than the clouds upon his cloak, and his smile tightened into a grim smirk. There was work to be done.

'Where is he?'

Jenny tried to shift her throat under the strong clasp of the man's hand and wondered briefly why he was asking her to talk and simultaneously crushing her voice box. The two actions combined were incredibly counter-productive. Her small fingers clutched at his arm a little more desperately than she would have liked to admit as the frightening ruby eyes before her narrowed into even thinner slits.

'Our tracker here can sense that you've been with him recently. Right, Karin?'

Through her blurry gaze Jenny could see the tall bespectacled redhead to the man's right nod her head in affirmation. 'That's right, Sasuke. His chakra signature is somehow all over her shoes, and on the ground here. He was here less than fifteen minutes ago.'

Once upon a time Jenny would have imagined that it would probably be quite erotic to be pushed, hard, into a tree and pressed down into it with hands as pale and rough as her captor's own. However, feeling the oxygen slipping away from her throat and her heart slamming recklessly into her ribs, she decided firmly that she had gotten the wrong idea completely.

'Sasuke,' drawled another voice that Jenny couldn't identify. 'She can't talk if you break her neck.'

The pressure immediately released upon her throat and she inhaled sharply, wincing at the sting of the air as it was pulled frantically into her lungs. A cough escaped her as the gaze of the man before her ('Sauce-kay, was it?') lessened in anger. His hand dropped clear of her body and she leaned back into the tree, heaving in great breaths, until she felt she could speak again. Her legs were wobbly and unsteady and she sank down the tree trunk until she rested on her haunches. All the while his gaze never left her.

'I'll ask you again.' His voice was stern and monotonous, unlike the rage-filled words he had spat at her moments ago. 'Where is Itachi Uchiha?'

'I don't know who you're talking about.'

Her voice sounded brittle and tiny. The eyes narrowed again, and as her vision began to return to normal Jenny saw the muscles in his arms start to tense again.

'Steady on, Sasuke.' That drawl returned from before, and Jenny could now identify the voice as belonging to a weird looking character to her captor's left ('Is his skin… actually… blue?') who was sucking blackcurrant juice from a cardboard carton in a lazy fashion. He spoke again, sharp-looking teeth still gripping the straw in his mouth. 'She doesn't look – or sound – like she's from around here.'

'That's right!' Jenny said quickly, keeping her eyes on the man with the bluish hue. 'I'm not from around here! I'm lost in this forest – I was just cooling my legs in the stream here – and I'm looking for my friend, who is also probably lost—'

'My tracker has found traces of Itachi on your shoes over there,' Sauce-kay snapped. 'I know you're lying.'

'I don't know who this Itachi man even is!' Jenny knew she sounded desperate again, but couldn't blame herself – she had been strangled half to death, after all – 'The only other person I've even seen in this horrible forest is the tall man who fished one of my shoes out of the stream because it fell in, and gave it back to me!'

'He saved your shoe?'

Jenny nodded, ignoring the pain in her neck as she did so. Studying the man with the red eyes she realised with a start that, with his pale skin and dark hair, he looked disturbingly similar to the man who had passed her shoe back to her with such a kind smile a little while ago. They even wore similar cloaks – although this cloak lacked the vibrant red clouds of the other. One wore a metal headband with a deep scratch upon its surface, and the other wore crisp white bandages across his forehead. Their expressions differed greatly, of course – one seemed a villain and one seemed a hero – but she would definitely guess that they were closely related. The man before her – face a little younger than the other – scowled.

'If I find out you're lying to m—'

'I'm not lying!' Indignity started to creep into her veins, and she even dared to scowl back at her captor. 'If I were lying, why would his scent be on my shoes but not the rest of me?'

'It's not "scent", you brat,' the redheaded woman barked quickly. 'It's "chakra". I'm not a dog.'

Jenny didn't reply; she didn't understand the word that the redhead was using. She simply stared up at the man who appeared to be the leader of this odd group, forcing her gaze to be as steady and confident as she could. He glowered down at her, scanning her face and eyes fluidly as though searching for any trace or hint of a lie. Suddenly, to Jenny's shock and slight confusion, the red colour seemed to seep from his eyes and his irises faded into the same deep blackness of the eyes of the man who had helped her. The resemblance now was astounding.

'Fine,' he said, almost sounding disappointed. 'I believe you. If you're telling the truth, you can tell me which way he went.'

Jenny nodded and pointed to the left. 'He moved off downstream about ten minutes ago.'

Sasuke followed the direction her arm pointed in with his eyes, and then turned to the rest of his group. They discussed something in voices too quiet for Jenny to hear, and while they talked she took heed of the other member of the foursome – a huge, wide man with a shock of bright ginger hair and arms so enormous that they looked as though they could crush the tree she leaned against, breath still hitching a little in her throat. He hadn't said anything yet, and, as the group talked in hushed whispers, he continued to remain silent. After a moment, the leader of the group turned back to her.

'We have decided we won't kill you.'

Jenny's stomach dropped. She hadn't even realised that death was an option here anymore. She attempted a grateful nod but the man continued to talk.

'However, you'll be coming with us. The ninja we're after isn't the type to show kindness – if he didn't kill you, he must have liked something about you. You might make decent bait in order to lure him out of hiding.'

She hadn't thought her stomach could drop any further, but Jenny felt as though gravity was dragging her from her very centre right through the floor. Before she could protest and explain that she was merely trying to look for her find and then get out of this place (wherever the hell she was – Jenny was quite sure she hadn't been drunk this afternoon and yet had absolutely no idea how she'd ended up in a forest), she was swept up gruffly in the arms of the huge, carrot-topped man. She suppressed a squeak of terror as he did so, but couldn't restrain it as he (and the rest of the group) suddenly took a flying leap into the branches of the trees at a speed she could not identify.

'Wait!' she suddenly shouted out, trying to ignore the fact that these people were bounding through the trees as easily as she would skip down the pavement. 'My shoes!'

She glanced at the black-haired leader of the group, but he did not seem to have heard her. All became a greenish blur as Jenny was rushed away from the stream and into the unknown.

Sara frowned down at the damp shoes on the grass and scratched her head. Once or twice in the past she had known Jenny to walk out in the street without her shoes on, but that was on pavement. A minor skin allergy to grass meant that it was highly unlikely Jenny would suddenly kick off her shoes in order to feel the grass between her toes. Plus, they were wet – the sun was strong, and would probably dry them out fairly quickly, so Sara could assume that it hadn't been very long since the shoes had acquired their wetness.

She scratched her head again.

There was no sign of her friend except for the shoes on the grass. That man with the kind smile had told her that Jen was washing her legs in the water, and, sure enough, the damp shoes fit that story quite nicely, but, unfortunately, the legs (and the owner of the legs) were missing from the equation.

Sara sighed, bending over to get another drink from the stream. She hated solving puzzles. Allowing the water to filter down her throat, the thought occurred to Sara that the man might have been lying to her – trying to get her alone in a position of vulnerability where he could attack her. Perhaps he was playing with her mind! Perhaps she should have paid attention to the notice he gave her slender legs, the eerie manner in which he appeared, the deceiving smile…

A rustle from behind startled Sara, but she forced herself to toughen up. She wasn't about to let herself be fooled and attacked by some creep in a caped-crusader cloak.

'Listen, you weirdo,' she shouted, refusing to turn her head and look at him. 'If you think you can just sneak up on me and take advantage of me just because I'm a pretty lost girl with no one to help her, you are sadly mistaken! There's a brain behind this cute little face, you know, and--'

She turned around. It wasn't him. She stopped talking.

Another man faced her, a man who was entirely different. The first thing Sara noticed about him was his hair – silver white, but healthy and thick – it clearly hadn't greyed with age but was a unique and incredible colour. He was taller than the man with the black hair by some way – at least six feet tall – and he too wore a cloak, although the colour was somewhat lighter than the other man's – a greenish cream, with dark stripes running along the base. The cloak hung open and Sara could see a dark green combat vest and navy trousers beneath it. Puzzlingly, his face was mostly obscured by a mask – all she could really see were his eyes – one brown, one red, and one of them scarred viciously with a deep vertical slash. His gaze was lazy and laid-back – but he did not remove it from her.

'You're not… who I… erm… expected.' Sara muttered a little meekly, feeling shy under his stare and embarrassed by her ranting. 'I thought I was being followed.'

'You were.'

She liked his voice. Not that the black haired man had an ugly voice – it had been friendly enough. But this man's voice was reminded her of sluggish gravel – it was slow, and deep, but almost a little cheerful and blithe. She did not like, however, what he had said, and chose to question him.

'What do you mean, I was being followed? Are you in league with that black haired man in the cloak?'

'We saw you speak to Itachi Uchiha earlier.'

'Who's "we"?'

'Who are you?'

Sara sighed. The man's voice was pleasant to listen to but his lolloping manner and laid-back, evasive questions frustrated her. With an effort not to let her annoyance show, Sara took a breath, and then attempted to inject her voice with the casualness so latent in the voice of her questioner.

'My name is Sara. I'm lost, and looking for my friend. I don't know where the bloody hell I am, and… and you're reading while I'm talking you to so you can't be all that interested in who I am.'

Indeed, the man had taken out a book and was leafing through it as though he words had bored him. Sara squinted at the title, and then smiled knowingly.

'Make-Out Paradise? Ha, an erotic novel? You're into that sort of stuff?'

The man raised his eyes to meet her gaze again. 'Are you?'

Sara smirked at him. 'As if. I'm a real woman – I prefer real men to satisfy me; not fictional ones.'

The man with silver hair seemed to smirk back at her – his eyes crinkled playfully – and he slipped the book into his back pocket smoothly. 'Is that so?'

There was a short pause.

'I like you,' he said from behind his mask, and Sara briefly wondered what his face would look like without the cloth. His body was slender; wiry, almost, but he looked strong and powerful. 'I like you – so it's a shame we're taking you into custody.'

'Who's "WE"?'

'The Village Hidden in the Leaves,' the man continued smoothly, as though he were reading from a cue. 'Unfortunately, you're trespassing in our forest – moreover, you have been spotted consorting with an S-Class Missing Nin. You will be taken back to Konoha and questioned – probably imprisoned.'

Sara was too shocked to speak. Trespassing? Consorting? Imprisoned?

'You're joking.'

She said it firmly, as though she knew already that she was right – but his expression told her that she was completely wrong. He was not joking.

'I haven't done anything wrong!'

'The village will decide that,' the man said quietly, his eyes looking a little torn. He'd said he liked her – clearly he didn't want to imprison her.

'Please,' she said, her voice soft and distressed, 'I'm only looking for my friend.'

'If Itachi Uchiha is roaming around the forest,' he said, reaching into his back pocket again but this time pulling out a pair of steel handcuffs, 'your friend is probably dead already. Come with me.'

'You don't even want to imprison me!'

'Orders are orders, miss.'

Miss. That was the second time Sara had been called 'miss' today.

'I'm not coming anywhere with you!' she growled, clenching her fists and tensing her muscles, ready to spring away from the man. 'You'll have to catch me, you pervert!'

She leaped away, remembering her time as a runner back home, enjoying the stretch of her legs and she bounded away into the fores--

She banged right into his chest, and suddenly, before she could even comprehend what was happening to her, her hands were locked into the handcuffs and his eyes were gazing directly into her own. She struggled against his chest as he held her firmly and tightly, eyes crinkled in a smile once more.

'Caught you.'

Oh no! How will the girls get out of this mess?! So many misunderstandings – and more to come as the story progresses! Will our two heroines ever be reunited?

Next chapter; 'Chances'.